The Global Trade in Smuggled Cigarettes DIGITAL NEWSBOOK RUSSIA UNITED KINGDOM EUROPE NORTH CANADA KOREA PAKISTAN CHINA UNITED CYPRUS STATES ALGERIA THE UAE PHILIPPINES PANAMA NIGERIA SINGAPORE BRAZIL Smuggling Routes PARAGUAY SOUTH AFRICA ARGENTINA INTERNATIONAL CONSORTIUM THE CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY Investigative Journalism in the Public Interest ICIJ OF INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS SHOW CONTENTS Tobacco Underground ©2009 Center for Public Integrity Table of Contents About the Tobacco Underground Project Project Credits About ICIJ and The Center for Public Integrity OVERV IEW Article 1 PAT R ONE: THE NEW SMUGGLERS Europe Made To Be Smuggled: Russian Contraband Cigarettes 2 ‘Flooding’ EU Going Undercover: Inside Baltic Tobacco’s Smuggling Empire 3 Ukraine’s ‘Lost’ Cigarettes Flood Europe: Big Tobacco’s 4 Overproduction Fuels $2 Billion Black Market China China’s Marlboro Country: A Massive Underground Industry 5 Makes China the World Leader in Counterfeit Cigarettes Smoking Dragon, Royal Charm: A Tale of Four FBI Agents, 6 62 Chinese Smugglers, and a Billion Bogus Cigarettes South America Smuggling Made Easy: Landlocked Paraguay Emerges as a Top 7 Producer of Contraband Tobacco When Cracking Down Seems Impossible: Paraguay’s Corruption 8 Fuels a Criminal Economy 3COVER C ONTENTS 5PG A E 1 OF 56 Tobacco Underground ©2009 Center for Public Integrity N orth America Article Canada’s Boom in Smuggled Cigarettes: Indian Tobacco 9 Factories, Organized Crime Control a Billion-Dollar Black Market Big Tobacco’s New York Black Market: How America’s Top 10 Cigarette Firms Fueled a Billion-Dollar Underground Trade ‘The Guy in the Wheelchair’: How an El Paso Smuggler Moved 11 a Half Billion Cigarettes Across America SMOKE2U: Tobacco Sales Take Off in Cyberspace 12 T errorists and Insurgents Terrorism and Tobacco: Extremists, Insurgents Turn to Cigarette 13 Smuggling The Taliban and Tobacco: Smuggled Cigarettes Give Boost 14 To Pakistani Militants PAT R TWO: BIG TOBACCO’S LEGACY The Montenegro Connection: Love, Tobacco, and the Mafia 15 Djukanovic’s Montenegro a Family Business: As EU Membership 16 Looms, So Do Troubling Questions Blame the Distributor: How Gallaher Stayed in the Smuggling 17 Game How To Get Away With Smuggling: Canada’s Billion-Dollar Deal 18 for Big Tobacco Tobacco Companies Linked to Criminal Organizations in Lucrative 19 Cigarette Smuggling GL OSSARY ON THE WEB 3COVER C ONTENTS 5PG A E 2 OF 56 Tobacco Underground ©2009 Center for Public Integrity About the Tobacco Underground Project Tobacco Underground is a project of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Working with reporters in more than a dozen countries, ICIJ is charting the frontlines of the illicit traffic in cigarettes. PROJECT STAFF David E. Kaplan, editor Marina Walker Guevara, deputy editor Andrew Green, web editor Cole Goins, deputy web editor Ariel Olson Surowidjojo, multimedia editor Sarah Laskow, audio editor Peter Newbatt Smith, research editor Laura Cheek, Paulette Garthoff, fact-checking Sara Bularzik, copy cditor Gordon Witkin, Tom Stites, additional editing Steve Carpinelli, communications REPORTING TEAM Mirsad Brkic (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Stefan Candea (Romania), Duncan Campbell (United Kingdom), Svjetlana Celic (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Patricia Chan (Hong Kong), Te-Ping Chen (United States), Gong Jing (China), Alain Lallemand (Belgium), Aamir Latif (Pakistan), Vlad Lavrov (Ukraine), William Marsden (Canada), Miranda Patrucic (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Paul Christian Radu (Romania), Mabel Rehnfeldt (Paraguay), Roman Shleynov (Russia), Leo Sisti (Italy), Daniel Santoro (Argentina), Marcelo Soares (Brazil), Drew Sullivan (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Kate Willson (United States). 3COVER SHOW CONTENTS 5PagE 3 OF 56 Tobacco Underground ©2009 Center for Public Integrity WEBSITE DESIGNERS Interactive Map/Homepage Design: Stephen Rountree www.rountreegraphics.com Web Site Design: Top Dead Center Design www.tdcdesign.com DIGITAL NEWSBOOK DESIGN This Digital Newsbook was produced for the Center for Public Integrity by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia. www.rjionline.org ADDITIONAL THANKS El Paso Inc. Le Soir Novye Kolesa ABC Color FUNDING AND SUPPORT The Center for Public Integrity relies on grants and donations to support its work. The ICIJ Tobacco Underground project is generously supported by a grant from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In addition, organizational support is provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, Greenlight Capital LLC Employees, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Park Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and other generous institutional and individual donors. The Tobacco Underground project is also grateful for pro bono assistance from PIERS (Port Import Export Reporting Service), the primary source of U.S. waterborne import-export trade data. 3COVER SHOW CONTENTS 5PagE 4 OF 56 Tobacco Underground ©2009 Center for Public Integrity About ICIJ The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) was launched in 1997 as a project of the Center for Public Integrity to globally extend the Center’s investigative style of journalism in the public interest. Based in 50 countries, ICIJ’s global network includes 100 of the world’s top investigative reporters who produce collaborative, cross-border reports on major global issues around the world. Since its founding, ICIJ has released a series of groundbreaking reports with global impact, including stories on tobacco industry collusion with organized crime, the war profiteering of Haliburton and other contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, the privatization of scarce water resources, and political lobbying payments by unsavory governments. ICIJ also supports international investigative journalism by presenting the biennial Daniel Pearl Awards for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. About the Center The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, and independent digital news organization specializing in original investigative journalism and research on significant public policy issues. Since 1990, the Washington, D.C.-based Center has released more than 475 investigative reports and 17 books to provide greater transparency and accountability of government and other institutions. It has received the prestigious George Polk Award and more than 32 other national journalism awards and 18 finalist nominations from national organizations, including PEN USA, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Society of Environmental Journalists, Overseas Press Club, and National Press Foundation. 3COVER SHOW CONTENTS 5PagE 5 OF 56 Tobacco Underground ©2009 Center for Public Integrity Overview By Marina Walker Guevara T A BEG N with a basic math- ernment inquiries, lawsuits, and ematical equation: In 1995 two promises of a global treaty to crack Ischolars in Europe found that down on the illicit cigarette trade. almost one-third of the world’s ciga- Since 2004, two major tobacco rette exports had simply vanished. companies, Philip Morris Interna- Somehow, billions of cigarettes, tional and Japan Tobacco Interna- once exported, had mysteriously tional, have agreed to pay a com- gotten lost in transit. bined $1.65 billion to the European Only it wasn’t that mysterious. Community and 10 member states Starting in 1999, a team of report- to settle litigation that would have ers from the International Consor- further exposed their involvement tium of Investigative Journalists in cigarette smuggling. They have (ICIJ) pored over thousands of in- also committed publicly to help ternal industry documents and un- fight trafficking in tobacco. Simi- covered how leading tobacco com- larly, this July, Canada’s two largest panies were colluding with criminal cigarette companies, Imperial To- networks to divert cigarettes to the bacco Canada and Rothmans Inc., world’s black markets. Big Tobacco pleaded guilty to aiding smuggling was doing it for profit — to boost during the early 1990s; they are to sales and gain market share — as it pay a combined $1.12 billion, the avoided billions of dollars in taxes largest such penalties ever levied in while recruiting growing numbers of Canada. smokers around the globe. The to- Yet, despite the exposés, the bacco industry, as it turned out, did lawsuits, and the settlements, the not merely turn a blind eye to the massive trade in contraband to- smuggling — it managed the trade bacco continues unabated. Indeed, at the highest corporate levels. with profits rivaling those of nar- Those revelations, and others cotics, and relatively light penal- that followed, helped lead to gov- ties, the business is fast reinventing 3ART ICLE 1 OF 194 SHOW CONTENTS 5PG A E 1 OF 56 Tobacco Underground ©2009 Center for Public Integrity itself. Once dominated by Western largely been curtailed, the situation multinational companies, cigarette remains murky in Africa and other smuggling has expanded with new developing areas of the world. players, new routes, and new tech- In late June 2009, smuggling niques. Today, this underground experts, customs officials, and industry ranges from Chinese coun- diplomats from an estimated 160 terfeiters that mimic Marlboro ho- countries gathered in Geneva, lograms to perfection, to Russian- Switzerland, to push for what has owned factories that mass produce eluded governments for decades: brands made exclusively to be a global crackdown on the black smuggled into Western